Open Your heart And Pay Attention

As you read this, I will be down at Kirkridge Retreat Center in Bangor, PA, for something called the Festival of Radical Discipleship. As part of that gathering, my wife, Lynne, my daughter, Kateri, and I were asked to say some words about Fr. Jim Callan who is one of the movement elders that has become an ancestor in recent years.

In preparation for this event, I have re-read Fr. Jim’s book, The Studentbaker Corporation, that I’m sure many of you have read. It is quite an amazing account of Fr. Jim’s history and how he came to be the person, the priest and visionary that so many of us came to know.

As I think about Fr. Jim, I think about today’s readings.

In our first reading from Acts 16, a woman named Lydia listened to Paul and “the Lord opened her heart to pay attention.” Lydia then went on to entertain the apostles in her home and became a leader in the early church.

Fr. Jim, like Lydia, was someone whose “heart was opened to pay attention.” As I re-read the book, I noted the number of times Fr. Jim opened himself to something new and let himself be changed by experiences. Whether it was the experiences of women speaking to him of sexism, LGBTQ+ people speaking to him of heterosexism, people of color telling him of racism, lay people giving him insight about clericalism, etc. Jim let his heart remain open. Because of that, he could hear the voices from the margins that were calling to him. 

He could have built walls around himself for protection and comfort. But instead he let himself be broken open by the injustices of the world and wanted to reach all the people who had “fallen through the cracks”-  the unchurched, the alienated, the rejected, the marginalized, those damaged by the church – through a different kind of approach…the church as a movement for justice.

Of course Fr. Jim did not invent this idea! He got it from reading the scriptures (the very ones we read week after week), listening to the stories we hear and listening to the stories of our ancestors in faith who responded to a higher call.

Hearing stories of people responding to a higher call is always inspiring to me. I think in my mind, “I’d love to do something like that!” So did Fr. Jim. He recounts that as a young seminarian, he and his “Studentbaker” cohort had dreams of being another St. Francis.

Higher calls are inspiring, for sure. And yet there is always a cost of some kind.

We read in John 15 today that Jesus tells his followers, “I have told you this so that you may not fall away. They will expel you from the synagogues,” and goes on to tell the disciples that people will try to kill them for what they are preaching and doing.

Growing up Catholic, I am not sure I ever heard a homily focused on the consequences of our faith because, honestly, I’m not sure that “being Catholic” came with any consequences. This was true, in part, because the faith tradition that I was exposed to early in my life likely did not anchor itself in passages like John 15 (or the Acts of the Apostles) where Jesus was telling his followers that trouble would come their way if they followed his path.

Jesus was trying to help his followers prepare for the inevitable confrontations with power and the status quo. But he also knew – from his own experience – that following God’s path might bring rejection from our family and friends, scorn from our neighbors, disapproval from people close to us. And so he tries to counsel his people to not “fall away.”

Fr. Jim did not “fall away.” He knew that by taking the course of action that he took, there would be trouble. In the book, for example, he recounts that he was fired from all four of his Diocesan assignments! While he joked about it later in life, this was not easy for him, and he had many doubts about whether he was doing the right thing along the way.

I read about the pain and questioning he went through especially when he was suspended from his priesthood the first time. He was publicly humiliated. His mentors and teachers openly disapproved of him and told him of their disappointment. People close to him did not understand his choices and called him arrogant. This is very real and painful stuff for anyone.

And yet Fr. Jim says that he resonated with the words of Chief Justice Earl Warren when Justice Warren said, “everything that I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for…”

It’s important to say that Fr. Jim did not just make trouble for trouble’s sake. The trouble that he got in was because he was trying to take risks that led the church and society towards a greater vision of justice, inclusivity and peace. He was not trying to be a rebel so much as trying to heal historical wounds that had been normalized and accepted as the way things are.

Obviously, there’s a lot I could say about Fr. Jim, and his life and legacy have touched so many of us. Reading the book again and preparing to say a few words about his life and its impact on me have also helped me to see that each of us is called to respond to the same invitation from God that Fr. Jim received.

But we do not have to be him or do what he did.

We just need to be like Lydia from our first reading. Let our hearts be opened. Sit down and fellowship with some new people. Hear some new stories and let ourselves be changed. Find a community that supports and sustains us in our vision. Live that vision in our lives. Prepare for resistance and don’t fall away. Repeat daily.